The 15 Best Time And Attendance Tracking Apps For Business Managers

Too often, time and attendance tracking is a major speed bump in your already busy day. But you can avoid the headaches associated with recording and reporting your employees’ work hours if you incorporate a time and attendance tracking app into your company’s workflow.

But which app is right for you, your employees, and your business? In this article, the experts at Sling discuss the best time and attendance tracking apps for business managers in all industries.

The Best Time And Attendance Tracking Apps

1) Sling Time And Attendance Tracking

Sling is at the top of the list of the best time and attendance tracking apps because of its ability to streamline a large portion of your scheduling, time tracking, and attendance reporting work.

With Sling, you can build your employees’ schedules within minutes instead of hours and manage time off, availability, and shift trade requests without collecting, sorting, and collating a huge stack of paper.

Add to that the onboard A.I. that will help you schedule overtime and avoid exceeding your labor budget, and you’ve got a powerful ally in keeping expenses under control. Sling will even help you reduce absenteeism and late arrivals and keep track of overlapping shifts and double-booking.

And that’s just the scheduling portion of the Sling app.

Sling also offers a unique feature that turns any phone, tablet, or computer into a time clock. It allows your employees to clock in and out of their shifts without clogging up a central terminal. Sling even notifies you when an employee is running late or forgets to clock in.

And that’s just the beginning of what Sling has to offer to help you better manage your employees.

2) Inch

Source: tryinch.com

Inch is a powerful, voice-operated workforce management and optimization app that seamlessly incorporates a time clock into its broad suite of tools.

On the employee side of things, Inch gives your team the power to clock in and out of their shifts from their phone or a designated terminal mounted in a vehicle or at each location.

They can even track time-on-task when it differs from regular work hours for even more insight into their workflow.

Remote and on-site team members can perform a wide variety of tasks right from their tablet or phone, including:

• Receiving voice-assisted reminder notifications
• Working from a shared task list
• Recording total time worked
• Clocking in and out of tasks at different locations
• Completing work assigned to them
• Getting clarity on work that needs to get done
• Communicating with managers and each other

Like Sling, Inch gives you the option to set up geofences around your place of business or a remote worksite so that, if an employee is outside those limits, they won’t be allowed to clock in until they cross into the appropriate space.

That’s powerful control over when and where your team works!

On the manager side of things, the Inch app opens up a new world of control — not just as a time clock app, but also as a communication method, a distribution channel, a task assignment and management conduit, and a payroll processing tool.

With the data that Inch provides, you’ll gain insight into how your team works and how you can improve workflow so they perform even better.

While Inch and Sling are similar in their time and attendance tracking capabilities, Sling has more robust scheduling and workforce management features that you can’t find anywhere else.

For the best of all worlds — scheduling, time and attendance tracking, task management, and much more — use Sling and Inch in tandem and watch your team’s productivity grow.

3) Harvest Time And Attendance Tracking

Source: getharvest.com

Time tracking can unlock key information about your business, but remembering to do it can be a challenge. Harvest makes it easy to track time and expenses so you get access to critical data without driving yourself (or your team) crazy.

Timesheets provide a wealth of information that can help you manage your diverse team more intelligently. Harvest collates this raw timesheet data into a visual summary of where your team’s time is going.

While Harvest does a great job keeping track of time on specific projects, it’s not a time clock per se, nor does it tabulate attendance directly. If you’re looking for an app your employees can use to clock in and out and that will also help you with reporting, labor costs, and scheduling, Sling is the better choice.

4) QuickBooks Time

Source: quickbooks.intuit.com

For employees who work remotely or switch jobs or locations regularly, there’s the QuickBooks Time tracking app.

Using the devices they already have and are familiar with, your employees can track time quickly and easily, with convenient clock in/out reminders, employee breaks, and overtime alerts to keep everyone on the same page.

Employees can clock in and out on their desktop, laptop, or mobile phone using iPhone or Android apps, text messaging, or dial in. Even offline or out of service, QuickBooks Time accurately tracks time and automatically syncs when back in range.

What QuickBooks Time won’t do is help organize and schedule your employees. It doesn’t offer built-in communications. It doesn’t have a tasks list. And it doesn’t remind you if you’ve double-booked an employee or scheduled them for a time they’ve requested off.

Only Sling does that.

5) Hubstaff Time And Attendance Tracking

Source: hubstaff.com

If you have a business with a remote team, Hubstaff offers the basics to help you run your remote workforce. With Hubstaff, you get:

• Time tracking
• Online timesheets
• Productivity monitoring
• GPS tracking
• Headache-free payroll
• Team scheduling

You also get project budgeting and invoicing capabilities to help you manage the front and back end of all your activities.

While Hubstaff is more of a project management solution (and nowhere near as powerful as Sling for onsite and remote employee management), it is still a nice addition to your regular workflow.

6) Toggl

Source: toggl.com

Toggl is another time and attendance tracking app that skews heavily toward the project management end of the spectrum. While you could figure out when your employees were working based on the time tracking data, Toggl really isn’t set up for attendance purposes.

Toggl keeps track of project time and gathers it together in one place so you can monitor the work and keep your team headed in the right direction. Features and benefits include:

• “One button” time tracking
• Automated timesheet fulfillment
• Flexible reporting
• Powerful time management
• Actionable business intelligence
• Reports straight to your email

While Toggl can’t help you schedule your employees on different shifts or streamline communication like Sling does, it can make improving productivity easier.

7) Kronos

Source: kronos.com

The Kronos suite of tools combines the power of workforce management and human capital management (HCM) in one unified cloud platform to help you manage your entire workforce from pre-hire to retire — whether they’re salaried, hourly, full-time, or part-time.

With Kronos, you can work smarter with integrated HR, payroll, talent, workforce management, real-time updates, and people analytics for better-informed business decisions in the moment.

And thanks to Kronos’ cloud-based operation, you can avoid delivery, installation, maintenance, and upgrade headaches so your IT staff can focus on your core business initiatives.

While Kronos is more of an HR tool than a scheduling and time and attendance tool like Sling, it can be useful for talent acquisition, onboarding, and other human resource purposes.

8) Tasklog

Source: tasklog.app

Tasklog is a cloud-based team task management app that can benefit individuals and organizations alike. It features a task manager, time tracker, timesheets, team boards, and a Pomodoro timer that helps employees break work into timed intervals.

But, unlike Sling, Tasklog is intended for smaller teams and may not work well with large groups of employees.

9) ezClocker

Source: ezclocker.com

ezClocker is a time and attendance tracking app for the job site, office, or wherever your team works. With ezClocker, there’s no need to buy a physical clock device or struggle to keep paper punch cards organized and accounted for.

This app allows your employees to clock in or out from their own mobile device. It can also act as a central kiosk where your employees can clock in or out just by entering a four-digit pin. No complicated email addresses or passwords to forget. Just streamlined employee time tracking.

ezClocker offers the same basic functionality as Sling — they’re both time and attendance tracking apps — but Sling takes everything to the next level.

10) Workday Time And Attendance Tracking

Source: workday.com

Labor costs, disorganized record keeping, inaccurate payroll, and inconsistent protocols can quickly become expensive burdens for your company.

Asking employees to use a paper timesheet might seem like the easiest way to control these variables, but the reality is this practice will hurt your business in the long run.

The best solution is a digital time and attendance tracking app like Sling, Inch, or Workday.

Using Workday, you’ll avoid costly labor disputes and expensive overtime and never have to run a correction payroll again. Plus, the Workday time and attendance tracking app is easy to use, so you won’t get pushback from your team.

While this app does offer recordkeeping features like Sling, it lacks the other organizational tools — such as scheduling, communication, artificial intelligence, tasks, and newsfeed (just to name a few) — that make the first entry on our list such a powerhouse.

11) Justworks Hours

Source: justworkshours.com

The point of all the time and attendance tracking apps on this list is to eliminate wasted time during the workday — be it yours or your employees’ — so you, your team, and your business can find more productivity and efficiency within the workflow.

Justworks Hours does this by giving you the power to:

• Set up automated reminders and alerts
• Customize overtime and break time rules
• Forecast tracking and shift management
• Establish geofencing for more refined clock-in/clock-out
• Sync data with payroll providers

But all that is for naught if the underlying foundation — your employee schedule — isn’t done properly first. For that, you need a more robust, flexible, and powerful solution such as Sling.

12) Replicon

Source: replicon.com

With the Replicon time and attendance tracking app, you can get rid of paper time cards and apps that don’t work well together once and for all.

Replicon’s centralized time data gives you the ability to run payroll, bill clients, and reimburse expenses with one tool instead of three or more. This allows you to manage all aspects of your workforce’s activities whether you’re on the go or in your office.

While Replicon is a useful time and attendance tracking app, it lacks the expanded functionality that makes Sling the leader in the industry.

13) Timesheet

Source: timesheet.io

With the Timesheet time and attendance tracking app, you can organize and oversee your on-the-clock mobile employees and receive instant alerts when they’re away from their job location.

Timesheet will even remind your employees to clock in and out. And, once they’re finished for the day or week, the app allows your employees to approve their hours worked while they’re online so there’s no delay in processing payroll.

While Timesheet is great for managing individuals and teams spread across a wide area, it falls short of the power of Sling in the scheduling, communication, and employee organization departments.

14) BambooHR

Source: bamboohr.com

With the BambooHR time and attendance tracking app, you can eliminate obsolete punch cards, timesheets, and long days of calculating your team’s work hours.

Instead, you and your employees will enjoy common features such as:

• A single screen for clocking in and out
• Smartphone compatibility
• Edit hours capability
• Time-on-task tracking
• One-click timesheet approval

BambooHR even keeps everyone up to date with automatic reminders so you don’t have to worry about forgotten entries, inaccurate payroll, or last-minute data entry cutting into your weekend.

The app also comes with project tracking to help your business be more productive and efficient. Employees log hours to specific categories like a project, client, location, or task.

With that data in hand, it’s easy for you to then create insightful reports to analyze resource distribution, billable vs. non-billable hours, time management, and more.

And, with BambooHR, there’s no need to chase down managers for timecard approvals and employees for their hours. Instead, you can set up automatic reminders to help everyone keep their schedules up to date and ensure that all timesheets are turned in on time, every time.

As versatile as BambooHR is as a time and attendance tracking app, it still lacks the functionality and flexibility that the Sling software offers — particularly when it comes to scheduling, communication, and team task management.

15) Paycom

Source: paycom.com

The Paycom time and attendance tracking app gives managers and employees the ability to:

• Enter and submit hours for approval through a timesheet app
• Edit and approve time, all online, from anywhere
• Control and prevent incorrect reporting and time theft, including buddy punching
• Set approved time to automatically sync system-wide with payroll tools so you don’t have to re-enter all the data

Paycom also gives employees access to their schedules 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year so they can mark their availability and swap or pick up shifts with co-workers.

What benefit does that have for you, their manager? It frees you from the hassle of making those constant changes and allows you to focus on keeping your business moving forward.

While Paycom does offer advanced time and attendance tracking as well as flexible scheduling, it does fall short of the Sling suite of software when it comes to communication, reporting, labor cost optimization (which you can do as you schedule with Sling), task management, and much more.

Get The Most Out Of Your Time And Attendance Tracking App

The best time and attendance tracking apps do much more than just track employee work hours. Take Sling, for example. Its powerful scheduling feature makes creating even the most complicated rotating or night shift a breeze.

No matter the size of your business, Sling helps you organize your employees’ work schedules in less time so you can move on to other, more vital, tasks.

The benefits that make Sling a leader in the industry don’t stop with time and attendance tracking features. Sling also addresses the difficulty of labor costs. These expenses are one of the largest capital outlays any business has to absorb.

And since you can’t manage what you don’t measure, Sling’s labor cost feature helps you optimize your spending while you schedule. That means there’s less back and forth trying to reconcile your employees’ work schedules with your labor budget.

Sling also provides several unique features that help you communicate with your employees, keep them engaged, and get more work done. Sling’s built-in messaging system makes it easy to send messages to individuals and groups alike.

You can easily reach employees within groups, locations, or even specific positions. Then you can share anything you like: files, photos, videos, links, or a quick “Hi. How’s it going?”

Sling’s newsfeed feature lets you set up pages on your own personal business newsfeed for any purpose you like. Share updates, files, pictures, and videos to create your own social space where all your employees can interact and have fun.

You can even use Sling to assign tasks to groups or specific employees, set due dates, and then follow their progress through to completion. It’s a powerful addition to an already powerful suite of tools that busy managers in businesses of all sizes can use to reduce the time it takes to get things done.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.

This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for specific advice.

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